Art Is the New Asset Class including art by William Joseph Verdult

                                         Princess

According to New York publication, over the past few years, a flurry of articles identified art as a component in every savvy investor’s portfolio. Figuring prominently in many of these stories has been the research of New York University economists Michael Moses and Jianping Mei. Using the Case-Shiller methodology originally developed for understanding real-estate markets, the professors tracked artworks that sold originally at auction in New York. They found art regularly showed returns somewhat below those of the S&P 500 but significantly above any class of bonds. Over much of the last half-century, the art they tracked was about on par with the S&P 500.

Published by The American Economic Review in 2002, the study caught fire. “It’s been a blast,” says Moses. “Prior to this study, all we had were war stories, but this study put art on the same footing as other financial assets. It’s a trillion-dollar asset class that in many ways works a hell of a lot like real estate.” Moses recently retired from teaching to focus on Beautiful Asset Advisors, a company aimed at monetizing the Mei-Moses research data.

The pair have hardly been without their critics, who assail them for not counting in their data work that fails to sell or “sunk costs” such as insurance and shipping, not to mention the onerous commissions exacted by auction houses. But most of the criticism stems from something beyond their control: the sloppy fashion in which both journalists and the art world deploy any numbers that fall into their hands, in this case using the Mei-Moses index as proof that art in general is a solid investment. “As an economist, that bothers me,” Moses says. “Because I have no idea what the non-auction market is doing, since there’s no transparency of prices.”

Worse, to the extent that the Mei-Moses data tell us much about contemporary art, it’s hardly encouraging news for investors. Once the professors realized how focused the buying public is on contemporary art, they folded in London auction records and had sufficient data to analyze the postwar and contemporary categories. “That market is less like the S&P 500 than like biotech start-ups,” says Moses. “The return can be very high, but so is the volatility.” In other words, caveat emptor.

As we've mentioned to you in prior posts, one of the Corporation's major objectives is to bring transparency to artwork. created by William Joseph Verdult.

We are well on our way of doing so by releasing to the public what the artwork actaully has sold for in the cash market. Our verdultbluebook.com as welll as distributing prices to other major online art websites will help in developing a transparent market for Verdult artwork.

Alton Perkins,
CEO of  Wealth Enterprises Corporation/Yazzy's Fine Art Corporation